Lincoln

Front matter

I N eo L N

BY

EMIL LUDWIG

Preface

For a foreigner to attempt to write the biography of a country's national hero is at best a difficult and dangerous task. The historian is sure to be reproached with the charge that no stranger, no outsider, can possibly understand the peculiar local atmosphere and background of the subject.

In dealing with Lincoln this is especially true, and the task consequently is doubly difficult, yet, in spite of this — and likewise in spite of the brilliant biographies that have recently been written around Lincoln by Beveridge, Sandburg, Tarbell, and a distinguished Englishman, Lord Charnwood — a number of my American friends urged me sincerely to essay this work.

Twenty years ago, an old friend and teacher who had played a part in the musical world of Chicago, gave me a volume about Lincoln, whom he had learned to admire from conversations with Carl Schurz. This old man tried to induce me to write the life of the Great American. In those days, however, I wrote poetry and no biographies, but in my way, I studied Lincoln's life portrait as one of the most human heads ever created. When I began work, his figure was familiar to me, without my knowing much of the external history of his life.

After studying the many contrary documents and sources, I have tried to write his life by the same method which, in 191 9, I was the first to use in my "Goethe", and later in my life of Napoleon.

The art of portraying human characters cannot be achieved by merely studying historical documents : it is practiced and learned in a never-ending study of living men and women. But we want the inspiring light of a great character to make documents breathe with the vividness and veracity of to-day.

viii PREFACE

I am sure that my American friends are not expecting me to give them a new Lincoln, or to open up fresh and undiscovered material, but rather to present Lincoln in a new historical method.

Consequently, I have made no effort to cover the history of slavery and of the great Civil War, but only to paint a picture of Abraham Lincoln. Excepting the English, Europeans, even intelligent and scholarly men and women, know far less about American history than Americans about the story of Europe, so I consider it one of the happiest privileges of my career to be able to present this greatest of American characters to the Old World.

In the New World, a number of American specialists, particularly Miss Ida M. Tarbell and Mr. Frazier Hunt, have earned my thanks by their advice and cooperation. I have no doubt, however, that many of my American readers will find faults in my story, and I can only beg them to consider the portrait as a whole and not to be too critical of minute parts. Lincoln's career, more than that of any other man in history, is so grandly conceived by Fate that the first act is illuminated by the last, and every scene is bound together by dramatic destiny.

I see him like one of Shakespeare's characters, absolutely original, comparable to none, immemorably unique. He has fascinated me for years, and if some good may be found in this effort of mine, it has sprung from a personal sympathy which I have never felt so strongly for any other great man of history.

Moscia E. L.

November i, iQ2g.

Table of Contents Preface vii

BOOK FIVE. Father 387 Index 491

List of Plates From photographs in the collection of Frederick H. Meserve, New York

1858 From an ambrotype said to have been made by T. P.

1848 From a daguerreotype made when Lincoln was a

representative in Congress 116

1854 From a daguerreotype made in Chicago . . .117

1858 From a photograph by Alexander Hesler, Chicago . 148

i860 From a photograph by Hesler, Springfield, Illinois . 149

Mary Todd Lincoln, from a photograph taken during the early part of Lincoln's administration . . 308

1863 From a photograph by Alexander Gardner, Washington 309

1865 Lincoln's last picture, taken April 10 by Alexander

Gardner, Washington 340

1864 From a photograph by Brady, Washington . . 341

Book One Wage Earner

The wintry blast howls round the cabin. As the storm sweeps over the clearing, the giant trees, still standing, groan beneath its bufferings. But these settlers within the cabin are used to the storm and sleep soundly, deaf to the tumult. Parents and children alike are tired out after the long labors of the day.

All but one of them. A little boy, four years old, has just been awakened by a stone blown from the chimney, that rattles down the rough, hand-split shingles and thumps against the log sides. It strikes the very spot where he and his sister are lying on a bed of sacks filled with dried leaves. He sees her little hand, one of her ears, and her rumpled, dark hair. Cuddling up against her for warmth, he can feel her toes with his. It's a good thing there is still a glimmer from the fire. He can amuse himself by looking around the room.

He sees something close at hand, glimmering with a golden sheen — Mother says that heaven is aglow with gold like that. It is the water in the great wooden bucket which she fills at the brook every evening. There's something else that glints in the firelight, hanging on the wall : Father's ax. The children are not allowed to touch it, for it is frightfully sharp, and will chop off a finger before you know where you are. Father is sound asleep there, under the ax, beside Mother. He's snoring again !

The little boy's thoughts, in their wandering course, come now to the sleeping mother. A sense of deprivation steals over him as he recalls how he used to lie beside her. His earliest memories are of lying close to Mother's warm body. The thought of the lost warmth makes him feel colder than ever. He would like to call to Mother for help, but Father has told him not to. It will be all right soon. He manages to pull some of the coverlet away from Sarah. It's warmer now. — In a trice, he is asleep once more.

When he wakes, the fire is burning brightly, its warmth and color driving out the gray daylight that blinks through the crannies. Sarah is still asleep, but Mother is standing by the fire, pouring some hot water into the milk — because one of the three cows has just died. The youngster knows that, for he is sharp of sight and hearing, takes note of all that goes on around him. No doubt Father is out in the barn now. Yet when he asks, Mother makes no answer ; she is too busy.

Deliberately, as if in play, he puts on his breeches, jacket, and shoes ; all made of buckskin. Father skinned the deer and tanned the hide; Mother stitched the things together; nobody wears anything but buckskin.

"When will it be Sunday ?" he asks Mother, snuggling down beside the fire. She laughs, for she knows what he has in mind — the biscuits she always bakes on Saturdays. From the shelf which is out of the children's reach she takes down the last loaf, and with the big bread-knife she cuts him a substantial slice. As he squats on the floor, dipping the bread in the milk before he eats it, suddenly she stoops, gives him a hug, and kisses him. He sits quite still, arms outstretched, tin cup of milk in one hand and slice of bread in the other, waiting till she has finished and he can go on eating. Then, glancing up at her, he wonders why she looks so sad ; he does not ask, for she can't bear to be asked that.

Now she stands at the table. The table top is a rough-hewn slab, with the bark still coating the under surface ; it is smoother above, but even there a little boy must be careful about touching it or he will get a splinter in his finger, which will make him cry, and then Father will scold.

They are frontier folk, living in Kentucky, at a time when half the New World is still virgin forest — as the Old World was two thousand years ago. This is a barren region ; it is even called "the Wilderness." Before a man can be a farmer and grow Indian corn, he needs must fell the great trees and clear the ground and win most of his food with his long-barreled rifle.

There he comes back, the hunter ! Towards noon, the children hear the dog barking. Undoing the thong with which the door is fastened, they tumble out into the open to meet their father, who comes, musket on shoulder, carrying a fine, big hare. Tall, dark, and bearded, he is clad in skins made from the game of his own shooting. He prefers a hunter's life to a carpenter's, though really he is a carpenter by trade ; when he works at his bench he makes tables and chairs for the neighbors. As the man lounges now by the fire, and, sharp-set, falls to upon the food his wife has served on the earthenware platter, the boy, looking at them both, thinks to himself that his mother has a harder time of it than his father.

II

When the boy is five, his restless father moves with his family eleven miles to the north. Here are fine woods and rich soil. The new cabin stands above a running brooklet. In summer, life is easy j it is no longer cold at night, and there's plenty to eat, for the woods are full of game. Not far from the log cabin runs the high road. Such a lot to see there, for it connects two towns. As the boy grows older, he learns their names, Louisville and Nashville. Wagons pass by, sometimes several of them in one day, carrying grown-ups and children with their belongings, always in the direction of the setting sun. Men ride towards the town, taking sacks of corn along with them. Others bring back boxes filled with all sorts of wonders. Soldiers go by too, from time to time ; Father says they are on their way home from the war. Once there comes a man in such splendid clothes — Mother says they are made of wool. He talks to Father about the rich soil of the Far West, and how cheap land is out there.

The children are not allowed to play in the road for as long as they would like. Their mother calls them home, sets them to weeding the garden, to gathering berries and picking mushrooms. These she dries and stores up for the winter. When the boy is six or seven, his father takes him into the fields, not to play, but to do his share of the labor. Up and down, up and down ! It's tiring work, sawing, but one must learn to do it well. At home, Sarah helps her mother to milk the cows, and she spins of an evening.

But on Sundays they sit in front of the cabin, and their mother, who has a lovely voice, though not a very strong one, sings to them. Sometimes she tells them Bible tales, for she has the wonderful memory of an illiterate. Throughout life the lad's speech will smack of the Scriptural phraseology which becomes so familiar to him in early youth. Father sits by, smoking as he listens. Comparing the two, the boy cannot but be drawn more to his mother. She is gentler, younger ; and, though quite as tall as her husband, she seems more winsome. He studies her shrewdly but unobtrusively ; notes the sallow tint of her skin, sees that her features are pinched ; looks into her sad, gray eyes. His heart is touched, and he understands why she is inclined to sing slow and mournful songs.

One Sunday, however, when they all go to visit friends in the village, he is surprised to see her among the merriest in the company. She outdances the rest as if nothing could tire her. This is his first acquaintance with alternations of mood from sad to gay and back again. Something stirs dimly in the depths within him, where he feels, with a budding alarm, that his mother, too, must have hidden depths in her nature.

Now and again, he goes with her to a neighboring farm, where she sits and sews. These folk have a big house. The kitchen alone is larger than the whole cabin at home. Upstairs are two rooms in which there are real beds — Father made them. Why should Father and Mother work for other people? Because the carpentry and the needlework bring in money, which will buy a new horse. Why have the others more money? Because they are rich. Why? No answer.

The boy's wonderment grows as he studies these and other neighbors. An uncle and an aunt have come to live near by. He is especially fond of Auntie Sparrow. She is a lively woman, brisk in her movements, clever, solidly built, gray-headed, in better health than his mother. She has fine things to tell the children, for in youth she traveled far afield, and saw some of the happenings in the great war when the Americans gave the English a thrashing. She can read the Bible and even write as easily and as freely as if she had never had to help in the fields and garden.

The children sometimes ask Father and Mother what they did when they were young. Their mother says her forbears came from Virginia, a long way off. But when the little boy asks about her mother, and where Auntie came from, she gives evasive answers.

Their father is more communicative. Fond as he is of riding, he is even fonder of telling the children about earlier days. This time he has a story about the Indians. A good while back his folk had come here from Virginia ; really, like Mother's, they had sprung from the North, and had no truck with the South, When he was a little boy, no bigger than Sonny now (Sonny listens with all his ears, staring at his father and pursing his lips), the Indians were on the warpath against the white men. One day he was in the forest with his father and his brother, near the cabin, when a shot rang out. Father fell ; Brother ran home for help ; he was left alone, for Father did not stir after the redskins shot him. Father was dead. The redskins came out from among1 the trees, and started to carry off the youngster, who cried and struggled. Brother came back with a musket and killed one of the braves. Then there was shooting all over the place and the child ran back to the log hut.

The little boy has listened breathlessly to his father's tale. If Grandfather, after whom he was called Abraham, was killed by the Indians, the same thing might happen to Father any day ! The father laughs, saying that new times have come now.

How beautifully Father tells a story, think the children. But he cannot read, and he laughs at Mother when she says that learning to read is a good thing. He can make cupboards and window frames, can shoot, can fell trees; what does he want with book learning ?

"Still, I should like to be able to read," thinks the little boy — " and write too, like Aunt ! " He goes to school now, four miles there and back, and when it rains he might just as well go barefoot, for all his moccasins do to keep his feet dry. The school is a log hut, scarcely larger than the cabin at home, with a dirt floor, but with windows, and a big hearth. Teacher is a local Irishman. A book is passed from hand to hand, the teacher shows them the letters, makes them spell out the words, over and over and over again

So that's reading, is it? Letters and words, letters and words; nothing like a story as yet. As for writing like Aunt Sparrow, they have not even begun to learn it.

But this year brings other events ; his father has been appointed road surveyor. The little boy, going to town sometimes with Father, hears talk of Indiana, a wonderfully fertile land, north of Kentucky ; and of the Ohio, the great river which flows between the two States. As road surveyor, or supervisor, Father sometimes has constabulary duties to perform ; and, having a taste for any kind of occupation rather than carpentering at home, he gets about a good deal — made welcome everywhere because he is a good story-teller. The boy is quick to notice when a story is a little different at a second telling !

When Father meets a Negro he asks the man to show his papers — a permit entitling him to travel. "Why?" asks the boy. "You can't understand that yet."

Once some prisoners are put in his father's charge. What are prisoners? Bad men, in irons. The child is horrified at the fierce faces of these bad men, who scowl at the supervisor as, with a huge, rusty key, he opens the door of the dark little lockup, and motions them in. There they remain, behind a barred door. Bad men? The boy's heart goes out to them, all the same. So there are some folk who put iron chains on other folk's feet? That's even worse than that there should be rich people for whom Father must make chairs and Mother sew before they can buy meal and salt.

A lot more to see and to think about this summer ! Father fells some of the tallest trees. With the ax, sharpened from time to time with the whetstone tied to his belt, he cuts into the old giants close above the roots. "Why? We've got a house already !" "That's going to be a raft." "What is a raft?" "A big, flat sort of ship which can float down river to the sea." "Where is the sea?" "'Way down south." The boy can hold the cords now, can help a little in the making of the raft ; can think he is helping to push the raft off from the shore of Knob Creek, which runs into Salt River, as Salt River runs into the great Ohio. His father rolls ten barrels down to the creek and loads them on to the raft. They are full of whisky. Mother is always sighing, these days, and at length the children learn why. Dad has sold their cabin and the farm. He is going to move to Indiana, where the land is much richer. To work little and earn easily is what he likes. The sale has brought in the ten barrels of whisky and twenty dollars in cash. Who knows what good fortune may be waiting for them up there in the north ?

At last everything is ready. They stand on the bank, waving farewells. Father pushes off, steers with a long, newly made oar, floating downstream, and is soon lost in the distance. Ere long, however, he is back again, with much to tell them about his journey. He is in a laughing humor, claps his wife heartily on the back, and declares that Indiana is a paradise. Autumn comes ; rainy weather. They pack up their belongings; pots and pans, tools, coverlets, clothing ; all are loaded on two horses. Mother and Sis climb on top of one load ; Father takes the little boy in front of him on the other. Off they go, in the direction in which they have watched so many others go before them. The journey takes five days. At night, Father keeps watch while Mother and the two children sleep on a bed of branches and leaves. There are still wild beasts in these parts, and wild men to fear.

Ill

Their new home in Pigeon Creek is to be larger and better lighted than was the cabin in Kentucky. They have all set to work together to build it, the father and his relatives, camping meanwhile as best they can in the pole shed run up near at hand. Uncle, Aunt, and a cousin have all come to the newly settled region, under spell of the old lure. The boy is glad when he sees his father cutting larger trees and making the cabin bigger, and also he is happy that it has a loft beneath the roof. Father is always cheerful now. Luck has turned, and he's going to get rich. There is fine hunting here; the land is full of game. The new farm is on a little hill, surrounded by swampy thickets. The spring is rather far off, however. Nearly a mile for the children to fetch water, and they must be careful not to spill it on the way back. The boy, who is eight now, sleeps in the loft, clambering up by rungs which Father has nailed to the wall. That is easy, and great fun ; but it is pitch-dark in the loft, for there is no window, or firelight.

More life and movement here than at the old home. Mother's parents, the old Sparrows, have come to Indiana, bringing along their adopted son, Dennis Hanks, a youth of eighteen. They are not so very old, the grandparents, and they make much of little Abraham.

They have to live pretty close together, these relatives. The country is much wilder ; there are bears in the woods, and a man was killed by them not long ago. A fire is kept burning day and night in front of the pole shed where they live until the cabins are finished, partly to scare away the beasts, and partly to make things warmer and drier. The region is marshy ; horses and cattle sicken, and men are struck down with fever; the children have to take Peruvian bark, to keep off malaria. Maybe it's of some use, but it makes them low-spirited. A strange dread of the open country has driven these folks into the woods and thickets, where they have to make clearings and grub up stumps, before they can plow and plant corn. The young people must lend a hand, especially a strong lad like Abe, sowing in springtime, harvesting in August. At all seasons he must help his mother, and soon take her place, beating the corn into meal with the flat of an ax, feeding the pigs, milking the cows, fetching wood and water. Thus does life run its round from day to day, from year to year. In the winter they can rarely wash ; often they huddle for days around the fire ; then comes a neighbor and they all, even the women folk, drink, smoke, chew snuff and spit ; and tell weird stories.

Then comes an October, two years after the arrival at the new home, when a malignant fever breaks out, striking down beast and man. Have the cattle eaten something unwholesome? Is it because the soil is too damp? Who can tell? The horses cannot get up ; the sheep writhe on the ground ; the milk has to be poured away ; men, women, and children take the infection, and lie groaning on their beds. Send for the doctor ? The nearest doctor lives thirty-five miles away, and has his hands full in his own district.

WAGE EARNER u

The inertia of grave illness and the desperate longing to do what is best for oneself and one's housemates get the upper hand by turns. Inertia has the best of it. No one to care for those of the children who have not yet fallen sick ; no one to cook ; no one to work in the fields ; no one to tend the cattle ; no one to swing an ax. No one ! No one ! Mother lies sick ; all are ailing together ; some are at the point of death.

Neighbors die. Grandfather and Grandmother die on their leaf beds in the pole shed. Then comes Mother's turn. She has a lean, ill-nourished frame, inclining to consumption, apparently lacking in the will-to-live, and the illness has its way with her. The boy, nearly ten now, stands by the pallid woman's couch, and cannot help her or himself. He watches his father's tears falling thick and fast, drenching the unkempt beard. During the early days of the epidemic the child's mood has been one of mingled alarm and curiosity. Since the first death has occurred among the neighbors, most of Father's time has been spent in making coffins, roughly timbered. The sound of the hammering, when the boards were being joined together — with whittled wooden pegs — is nerve-racking to the sick and a menace to those still afoot.

He watches furtively as his father takes the measure of the dead mother's body ; tall, she is, he thinks, and will need a long coffin. While the father is making it, the boy has to help, fetching and carrying. That takes his mind momentarily off his sorrow.

When his mother has been laid in the coffin and the coffin has been put away under the sod, when he comes back to look at the empty couch, the thoughtful boy is overwhelmed with a sense of loneliness. His father is no longer dear to him. If, as happens sometimes, Father gives him a rough word or a slap, he recalls that his mother has always been gentle to him. In her melancholy moods she had sometimes looked steadfastly at him, as if thinking that he was growing up to resemble her. The sense that there had been a secret sympathy between them (a sympathy which had perhaps existed only in his imagination) springs up in his mind, and becomes intensified by his sorrow. It is to last all his life. The proneness of reflective and serious natures to long for the unattainable and the irrevocable makes him cherish the memory of his mother, and increases his spells of melancholy.

A year later the father sets out on a journey ; says he is off to town and will not be back for some time. Maybe he tells the children he is going to bring them a new mother, or perhaps the cousin has overheard some discussion. Certainly the thoughtful boy, eleven years old now, spends an uneasy fortnight, for he has heard plenty of stories about stepmothers.

Then comes the evening in December when the father returns. Four horses draw the wagon that brings him back from Kentucky, well-fed horses and a smart wagon. The children's hearts are fluttering with anxiety. What will she be like ? A strong, brightlooking, rather talkative woman gets out ; she has curly hair and a friendly countenance. But who are those others? No less troubled than the two children peeping out of the farmhouse are the three children peeping from under the cover of the wagon ; and perhaps the father is the most embarrassed of them all. However, he brings the strange youngsters in, and introduces them as John, Sarah, and Matilda. Another Sarah ! Abe and his Sarah have little time to think about this at the moment. Their father is unloading boxes and baskets, unwrapping furniture, producing a polished wardrobe, and real beds !

In a few days, those who had made acquaintance so shyly are playing together in friendly fashion. Abe and Sarah learn that their new mother likewise is named Sarah. This third Sarah gets to work promptly, setting matters to rights. The cracks between the logs must be rilled up with clay; the table must be planed ; and soon Abraham, still sleeping in the loft, does so on a sure-enough bedstead, with John Johnston beside him.

Johnston had been his father's name, says the stepbrother ; dead only last autumn. Then Father must have known my new mother a good while back, thinks the youngster, puzzling matters out for himself.

Although there is no evidence that the second Mrs. Lincoln can read, she values book-learning, and is set upon it that all the children shall go to school together. This endears her to the boy, for he has long been eager to win the power of mining the treasures that must lie buried in books. Especially has he felt this desire burn within him when listening to the conversation of the parson, the land surveyor, or the lawyer who sometimes passes by on circuit. His father is still determined that Abe shall be a carpenter and nothing more. He has got on famously himself without book-learning, he says, and laughs at the new mother when she speaks of its advantages. Tom Lincoln is of sanguine temperament, prone to look upon the world, and upon his own life, through colored glasses.

They go to church on Sundays. It is a bald, bare-looking place. Often one of the congregation addresses the rest, but the children find it hard to understand. At school, however, Abe makes good progress, and soon learns to write as well as to read. In later years his cousin remembers that the boy had been quicker at his books than the others.

What a pity that paper is so scarce and so dear. He makes a preliminary sketch of what he wants to write in charcoal on the top of a box, and only when he is satisfied with the first script does he transfer it to the precious paper. Thus early does he acquire the art of thinking out essentials and expressing his thoughts concisely. That is how Abraham Lincoln learns to write.